ROLE AND IMPORTANCE OF BIOFEEDBACK AND PROPRIOCEPTION IN IMPROVING THE FUNCTIONALITY AND ACCEPTANCE RATE OF UPPER EXTREMITY PROSTHESIS: A REVIEW

Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation

Study design: Literature Review Background: Loss of upper limb dramatically decreases the quality of life & is a challenging task for prosthetic rehabilitation. Many functional limitations in the prostheses decrease the acceptance rate by users. For upper limb prosthetic users, absence of sensory feedback & proprioception impedes efficient use of the prosthesis & is highlighted as major contribution for improvement of functionality and acceptance rate of prosthesis. Objective: To review the role & importance of biofeedback & proprioception in improving functionality & acceptance rate of upper extremity prosthesis. Method: An electronic database search was conducted using Google scholar and Pubmed databases and reference lists from all retrieved articles. Result: After reviewing literature, it was found that upper extremity prosthesis those incorporate these factors biofeedback and proprioception finally lead to improved functionality and acceptance rate. Conclusion: Upper limb prosthetic functionality is ultimately dependent on user’s ability to efficiently manipulate and interface with their prosthesis. It follows that having intuitive control would increase the utility of device. Clinical relevance: Review was done to conclude potential value of artificial proprioception and sensory feedback for end users. Various sensory feedback systems and proprioception techniques have been proposed from literature for clinicians’ awareness and application of same in clinical practice to bridge gap to improve functionality and acceptance of upper extremity prosthesis.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.